Adding Pantone swatches to a document is difficult

[funwithstuff]

Great start to the app, a few rough edges obviously.

1. While it's easy enough to use any Pantone colour in the Swatches panel, it's hard to add one to the document swatch. The #1 way people will try is to go to the Swatches panel, then choose "Add Global Colour…", but if you choose Pantone in that modal dialog box, you can't show the list of swatches by name, and you can't search. You can hover and wait for a tooltip, but that's a nightmare.

2. Going a different way, choosing Pantone from the Swatches panel, then 485C, then applying that to an object, then right-clicking the object and choosing Add to Swatches > From Fill works, but it's not obvious.

3. Converting the Pantone 485C swatch back into CMYK doesn't give the values I'd expect. In InDesign, this is 5.84/97.64/100/0.57, but in Affinity Publisher I see 0/81/87/15? Another: Pantone 130C in InDesign is 2.43/37.87/100/0, but in Publisher it's 0/30/100/5. What's going on? Is there some kind of double conversion happening? Is it just that the new "V2" of Pantone+ Coated is completely different *again* from the last version? (Pantone+ Coated is not the same as Pantone Coated, all the CMYK breakdowns changed in CS5 but few noticed. 485C used to be 0/98/100/0.) Worth noting that the Pantone+ CMYK Coated values *do* seem to be the same between InDesign and Publisher. Still, if Pantone numbers in Publisher are so wildly different from Pantone numbers in InDesign, clients will be pretty unhappy. Most people only use the "C" numbers but then print in CMYK anyway — the breakdowns are really, really important. This may be Pantone's fault, but Affinity will get the blame if colours don't match.

[edesigned]

Thank you for this detailed observation. Many of us will need this as most of our work will be printed (for now i just start with digital brochures). I am curious to the reaction. 

[laraksca]

I am impressed with how much I see in this Beta. I would like to see the color / spot color handling mature.

[Chris_K]

Hi funwithstuff

Thanks for the suggestions, a search for the pantone would indeed be useful. 

The conversion to CMYK will depend on the colour profile you are using, each one will give slightly different results. I've tried with 485C which gave me a C8 M97 Y100 K1 which is not too far the value that Pantone quotes on it's site of C 0 M 95 Y 100 K 0, but again depends on the colour profile used

Cheers

[funwithstuff]

Confirmed that different profiles give different breakdowns in different profiles. Also confirmed that this actually happens in InDesign as well. I think it's still going to freak people out, but it's a good reminder that you need to pick colours for a design using Pantone OR CMYK, but not both. The remaining differences between InDesign and Affinity Publisher are probably due to the new Pantone Coated V2 breakdowns, but check profiles if you're comparing the apps.